In today's fast paced computer dependent world, people make purchases, payments, deposits, and other financial transactions without the exchange of traditional money, checks, or even the simple act of handing a teller a credit or debit card. Many transactions made by individuals today are done over the telephone or Internet. To accomplish this, people must submit unique identifiers in order for their preferred payment instruments to be accepted and activated. Such identifiers include the person's name, address, credit card number, CVS number, and frequently, a PIN or “shared secret” such as a mother's maiden name or family pet's name. Identifiers can quickly become dispersed among several credit card company databases, healthcare databases, mortgage company databases, and on-line merchant databases. These identifiers may be transferred over a wireless network or a portion of the Internet, which may make them vulnerable to be copied in transit. These identifiers may be captured by spy-ware sending keystrokes on a computer to a thief lurking in any corner of the world.
It is not unusual in the course of a consumer's relationship with a bank, a healthcare provider, an insurance company, a merchant or a credit card company for him to need to access his account records. It might be to dispute a payment, to prove a payment was made, to verify an order, or to simply check an account balance. To gain access to his records a person must provide his unique identifier information to validate his identity. In certain healthcare circumstances, only a person's duly authorized physician may access a healthcare provider's databases containing his medical records.
With so many in-person enrollments and on-line registrations for various utility companies, on-line merchants, and banking and healthcare providers, it is a common practice for people to use the same passwords, PINs, and “shared secrets,” so they can remember what to provide should they someday need access to a certain database. An unintended byproduct of the dispersal of a person's unique identifiers among so many locations is the emergence of identity theft crime. Once a weak link in the chain of trust breaks, a fraudster can appropriate an identity and direct an unauthorized flow of funds.
Depending on the payment instruments used, detection of this illegal activity might not occur for several days, weeks, or even months. There is not a priori notification to the true owner of such unique identifiers that access to information is being sought because it is assumed that the person gaining access to such information IS that person. Economic harm is not the only kind of harm wrought by fraudsters. For instance, illegal access to health records can prevent a job hire, cancel an insurance policy, or restrict freedom of movement.
Therefore, there remains a need in the art for an easy and convenient system and method for validating another person's identity without the need for security or encryption devices. There also is a need in the art for notifying a person when authentication of their identity is made, by whom, and for what purpose. There is a need to deeply validate identity involving access to restricted records such as digital signatures of the registrar-institution that deposited the person's unique identifiers. There is the need for banks and healthcare institutions to obtain proof that information's accuracy is protected by a liability contract. There is a need for individuals to be able to know about and approve transactions that can involve private aspects of their identity.
User concerns that need to be addressed are:                How can I be SAFELY identified on Internet?        Who's willing to vouch for me to third parties?        Shouldn't I be informed when my information is sought, by whom and for what purpose?        How do I know what's known about me, by what entities, and how is their knowledge cloaked or hidden?        
Privacy Rights Management is a new industry. Numerous registries of identities exist today and identifiers can be correlated among them. There is a need for information to flow to consumers when such correlations happen so they can approve the use of their private identifiers.
This need in the art extends but is not limited to specific communities of interest wherein access to information, or approval of a transaction involving transfer of a financial or information asset, is an essential element. This is a key part of interactions between various users, consumers, businesses, agencies, regulators, and/or other interested parties. These interactions may include validation and authentication for instances such as:                approving access for review purposes to financial, health care, subscription, personal, or other information;        determining identity-related status for shipping and receiving of physical items;        determining suitable status for the transfer of tokens and access rights for digital products;        for eligibility to view and print tickets, reservations, airline boarding passes, or other digital documents; and        for determining authenticity of source when material for publication or edits to web-knowledge repositories such as Wikipedia is submitted by persons whose identities are not hidden or partially obscured, but true.        
Finally, there is a need in the art to mediate between public and private aspects of potentially shared information. In particular, there is a need for identifiers that enable access and transactions while preserving privacy and protecting information. This includes identifiers that are suitable for public exposure, for direct use (e.g., the “one-way” public payment addresses known as Linked Credit Account or LCA and others of its class of payment addresses having similar one-way characteristics), or for indirect use (e.g., simply as an identifier solely used to initiate authentication processing). It also includes healthcare identifiers used to access personal healthcare information (PHI) for individuals, as well as identifiers and related transactions relevant to other communities of interest.